Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro - Screen and Camera

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In use the Vivaz Pro’s screen is good if unexceptional. Thanks to a fairly high resolution (360 x 640) for its size, it has above average sharpness and it produces strong yet natural looking colours. Also, despite being an LCD panel, viewing angles are also very good. As such it’s generally nice to use with the only ”major” caveat being the amount of scrolling around required because of its small size. Its only other downside is the unimpressive contrast level, and the quality of its blacks. Consequently, videos and pictures don’t really leap out of the screen and look a bit muted.

Muted certainly isn’t the word we’d use to describe the pictures this phone takes, though. Admittedly we took these photos on a particularly bright and hot day so the sky was bluer than we’re used to, but it certainly wasn’t as blue as in these pictures. Neither was it quite so mottled and grainy. Ultimately, despite the Vivaz Pro’s focus on its camera, it is in fact entirely average – fine for Facebook, but poor for printing.

Likewise, its HD video recording abilities are now far from unique, with both the Apple iPhone 4 and Samsung Wave sharing the same basic hardware. In fact, thanks to the iPhone 4’s on-board editing abilities, the Vivaz Pro has now fallen behind. That said, there are still few handsets that can record in 720p and it is still markedly better footage than you’ll find on non-HD phones.

One oddity with the camera is that, unlike the majority of handsets, the Vivaz Pro doesn’t use a single shutter button and a software based switch for flipping between video and stills modes. Instead it has two hardware buttons. These sound fine in theory, but in practice it constantly catches you out as you go to start recording some video and press the camera button instead and end up switching modes. At least it has a button for the camera, though, unlike the iPhone 4.